It is even easier to avoid it by not using the module at all. The amount of code required to replace the module is small enough that it is hardly worth using the module unless it provides a marked interface improvement, which it comes close to doing. Perhaps before Perl 5.8 it fully succeeded.

And I think it would only require (any number of) minimal changes to the module for it to be generally useful to me. As is, it just misses the mark except in limited situations. Offering to export stat()/lstat() with non-conflicting names [Stat()/LStat()] and populate() with a better name1 would certainly suffice.